


Blood Money

by generally



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: (or is it), Creepy Phone Calls, F/M, Gay Panic, GoFundMe Scams, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Making Fun of the Worth It Boys, Murder Mystery, Slow Burn, Unfinished wip, the Whole Nine Yards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 16:32:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17267546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/generally/pseuds/generally
Summary: After maybe the twentieth time playing back the voicemail, Shane starts to debate whether to call back or not. He posits that one of four things might happen if he does:1) No one will pick up (likely)2) Someone will pick up (slightly less likely)3) Ryan will pick up (only if this were that atrocious Unfriended movie), or4) A portal to Hell will open up beneath his feet, and he’ll be swallowed by Lucifer’s blazing inferno, never to be seen again.He genuinely can’t say which of those outcomes would be more terrifying.





	Blood Money

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to my lovely beta Burnie (@mamaburnie on AO3) for being a dear friend and constantly putting up with my annoying self <3  
> **Indefinitely unfinished WIP

**LOS ANGELES TIMES**

**_Friday, June 29th, 2018_ **

**Buzzfeed Video Producer Found Dead Near Indian Canyon**

The body of Ryan Steven Bergara, a 27-year-old California man, was discovered outside Palm Springs, CA on the evening of Wednesday, June 27th, according to Riverside County coroner’s records.

Authorities responded to a call at 11:03pm that reported the victim’s body found in a ditch along S. Palm Canyon Drive, approximately half a mile from the entrance to Indian Canyon. According to Sheriff  Stanley Sniff , the primary responding officer on the scene, the body was found in such a state that the victim could only be properly identified after a DNA analysis.

Bergara was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:12pm, according to coroner’s records. An exact time of death is indeterminate at present.

Sheriff Sniff said investigators are looking into the incident and encourages anyone with relevant information to contact the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office.

Bergara was a video producer at Buzzfeed, Inc., a pop culture news and media company with several affiliated YouTube channels. He was best known for his work as co-creator and lead producer of YouTube-based docuseries  _ Buzzfeed Unsolved _ . He was also the founder of media production company Jamexi Productions.

-

Shane hates to be a hypocrite, he really does, but he genuinely cannot believe this is real.

He’s holding fast to the idea, however implausible, that Ryan is playing the world’s most elaborate, highly-orchestrated practical joke on him. He certainly doesn’t put it past him to  _ Gone Girl  _ himself. He’s only described to Shane about three dozen times (in painfully boring detail) how he would’ve patched up all the movie’s plot holes, so he’s undoubtedly done his research. As always.

And Shane must admit, as far as death-faking schemes go, Ryan really did a bang-up job with this one. Front page column headline in the  _ LA Times _ , national TV coverage, hundreds of online news outlet reports, thousands and thousands of Buzzfeed fan letters of heartfelt condolence (a large handful addressed directly to Shane, but he’s been shoving them all in the bottom of his file organizer without a second thought as soon as they appear in his office mailbox), and even a memorial service organized in his honor.

Absolutely airtight.

Shane’s loath to call it a wake. He tends to associate wakes with distant childhood memories of long, dull evenings spent shuffling around stuffy funeral parlors, surrounded by adults he’d never met who’d come to pay their last respects to some old dead geezer. Through the doorway of the fellowship hall at Holy Trinity, he surveys the crowd of mostly twenty and thirty-somethings milling about, mingling hesitantly, uncharacteristically quiet. It looks more like an ill-planned industry networking event than a memorial.

He paces around the lobby fervently for a bit before circling back to the table near the door. Five small framed pictures (one of which he’s in) surround an open leather-bound guest book, already over halfway full with signatures and heartfelt messages. He flips through it absentmindedly, familiar names jumping out at him - Kelsey Darragh, Adam Bianchi, Maya Murillo, Ashly Perez, Steven Lim, Sara Rubin.

He doesn’t sign the book. If he signed it, he’d be conceding - giving Ryan the last word, something to rub in Shane’s “I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it” face. Setting it in stone.

Itching for something else to do with his hands, he reaches into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, pulls out a folded piece of paper. He unfurls it precariously, dreading the inevitable moment later when he’ll read its contents out loud to all the folks inside. He’s practiced, though, because he knows himself, and this is not the time to wing it. Better stick to the script before he says something he’d most definitely regret. Ryan’s mother specifically asked this of him, and it’s a responsibility he’s carrying with the utmost respect. It’s the least he can do.

As he scans the paper’s contents, the ink of his thoughtfully-crafted speech seems to bleed away in a blur, with only one recurring word standing out clear as day, mocking him.

_ Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan. _

He starts to feel sick to his stomach.

From inside the fellowship hall comes a whine of audio feedback followed by a  _ tap-tap-tap _ on a microphone.

“Testing, testing,” murmurs one of the Holy Trinity pastors into the mic, and that’s his cue.

-

It’s not until Shane comes back to his computer from a talk with his  _ Ruining History  _ editor with two fresh coffees in his hand that he notices Ryan is two hours and thirty-five minutes late to work.

Normally this wouldn’t be much cause for second thought; he usually doesn’t see Ryan in the mornings until around ten or so, especially on a Monday. Ryan is, after all,  _ Unsolved _ ’s sole producer, and that entails lots of meetings first thing in the morning with video production managers, branding officers, and anyone else who decides that they’re important enough to waste his time.

But if they’re not shooting  _ Unsolved  _ or skillfully procrastinating together at their shared desk, they’re texting. Ryan’s complaining to Shane about how if he has to listen to the VPM drone on and on about overhead costs for one more second he’s gonna hit him  _ over  _ the  _ head  _ with a chair. Shane’s sending Ryan clandestine pictures that he took on the set of a particularly questionable Try Guys shoot he’s helping out with. Both of them are sharing screenshots of the same hilarious  _ Unsolved  _ fan-made Twitter memes at the same time.

Shane doesn’t think he’s exchanged more messages back and forth with another person in his life, and that’s including his three previous long-term girlfriends  _ and _ his mom.

He watches the steam rise idly from the mug of coffee he’s placed on Ryan’s side of the desk, and thinks. Ryan hasn’t texted him since yesterday afternoon.

He pulls his phone out from his back pocket with one hand, drums his fingers on his desk nervously with the other. Maybe Ryan got sick all of a sudden and is just sleeping it off. He’s the kind of guy who can cure any of his ailments with a nice six-hour nap. Shane’s too large for that; he usually just pops a couple Advil and lets his antibodies do what they do.

Muscle memory directs his thumbs to his and Ryan’s endlessly long iMessage conversation.

**Did you finally die of boredom in a branding meeting today? Condolences to the family.**

Then, as an afterthought:

**In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in the form of a chocolate muffin from the kitchen being donated to my desk :)**

He just stares at his own sent messages for a moment, a long, drawn-out sigh escaping through his teeth. The little “Delivered” message never shows up. Stupid shitty WiFi.

-

He sits through the first half of the speeches in a nearly unfeeling daze. First is Ryan’s high school AV Club teacher, then his best friend from Chapman, then his confirmation sponsor. They all stand behind the podium up on the little fellowship hall stage and say the exact same things, just in different words -  _ he was always so positive and happy, he had a true gift for filmmaking, he never stopped trying to do the right thing, he made everyone around him feel welcomed and appreciated, he was a bright light in so many people’s lives. _ It’s all undoubtedly true, but it’s being said at least forty years too early.

Each speaker in turn tears up during their speech when talking about how Ryan’s life was cut so short, how he was already doing such amazing things and was meant to do so much more. The atmosphere is unbearably somber, so anguished and  _ tangible _ that you could cut it with a knife. It’s exactly how Ryan wouldn’t have wanted it to be, at least under normal circumstances. Maybe that’s further evidence to support the  _ Gone Girl  _ theory.

And then it’s Shane’s turn to speak.

His brain is on autopilot as he propels himself up the side stairs and across the stage to the podium. He takes out his paper, places it on the podium, adjusts the microphone, and takes a second to breathe as he looks out into the sea of faces, at all of Ryan’s bereaved. There’s not a dry eye in the house by this point, at least apart from his. He’d already cried all his tears, when the news first broke. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to cry about anything else for a long, long time.

He catches Sara’s eye in the fifth row, sitting in between Quinta and Safiya. She gives him a gentle, comforting smile. She’s always been so good at that.

“Hello, everyone.” Already, his voice is unsteady. Spectacular.

“For those of you whom I haven’t met, my name is Shane Madej, but if you were at all familiar with Ryan’s work at Buzzfeed, you’ve likely seen me co-hosting one of his  _ Buzzfeed Unsolved  _ episodes.

“I met Ryan at the Buzzfeed office in Hollywood. in early December of 2014, when I had just been hired as a junior video producer. At that point, he was only going on his fourth month of his internship with the Motion Picture department, but that didn’t stop him from taking it upon himself to show me around like he owned the place.” That gets a genuine laugh out of the audience for the first time all night, primarily from the Buzzfeed employees in attendance. Even in death (he uses that word a little loosely), he’d never pass up on the opportunity to poke fun at Ryan.

“Three and a half years later, I’d never known Ryan to be anything but exactly how he was to me on that day: skillfully self-assured, a natural teacher, and a lifelong servant to others. I have had the absolute honor of calling him my colleague, my co-host, and my friend.”

His throat catches ever so slightly on the word “friend,” for reasons he can neither explain nor afford to examine right now.

“I’d always relished in the times when I got to work alongside Ryan for a project or video, so when he first came to me about a year and a half ago during  _ Unsolved _ ’s beginning stages and asked if I would be the show’s new resident nonbeliever, it was an unquestionable ‘yes’ from me. Because let me tell you, working  _ with _ Ryan is a blast, but working  _ for  _ Ryan is even better.” Shane goes on over the murmurs of agreement from Ryan’s former coworkers. “As a producer, he’s incredibly creative in his own right but still so validating of your ideas. He’s passionate about every single one of his projects, and he pours his whole heart into everything he does, no matter how large or small.” He catches himself still speaking about him in the present tense.

“As far as his brainchildren went,  _ Unsolved _ was his baby, and it was born out of his often frustrating but nonetheless admirable ability to sit back, throw up his hands, and put all of his trust in the unexplainable. Granted, all we talked about on  _ Unsolved _ was ghosts and aliens, but it spoke to his eternal and unrelenting open-mindedness. He never judged a person without first putting himself in their shoes. Everything he did, he did with profound sincerity and empathy. And a fair sprinkling of sarcasm.

“It’s... it’s so difficult to talk about how much Ryan meant to me because he meant so  _ many _ things to me. Office deskmate, carpool partner, corny chain email penpal, In-N-Out-at-1am enabler. Someone who I could talk and laugh for hours with about the dumbest little things. Someone I’d pick up the phone for in the middle of the night because I know he’d do the same for me. Someone I’d bail out of jail for trespassing on private property trying to get some spooky footage.”

He pauses again to wait for the giggling of the audience to die down. In spite of their laughter, many of them have begun to cry anew, but not the terribly depressing sort of crying. The kind of crying where you realize that wow, yes, you  _ can  _ properly mourn someone while still finding joy in all the stupid shit they did during their life! Ryan would  _ hate  _ seeing his family and friends sitting there like they were before, too afraid of disrespecting his memory to remember him for what he really was: just a snarky, sports-crazy, amateur ghost-hunting goofball. Hell, he thinks anyone who didn’t take themselves too seriously would hate that.

Shane spots Ryan’s mom in her front-row seat, her hand on her husband’s knee, smiling ear-to-ear through her tears. She wipes them away with her kerchief.  _ Thank you,  _ her worldly-wise eyes seem to say to him.

“The point is, I am so unbelievably lucky to have known Ryan the way I did. I’ve had the best times of my life with him by my side, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I hope every day to embody just a tiny amount of his unbridled enthusiasm, his work ethic, and his childlike wonder, and I encourage you all to try and do so as well. If he was taken from us too soon, the least we can do to honor his memory is to keep him alive in our words and our actions. Thank you.”

He’s the first speaker of the night to receive a round of full, vigorous applause, not that it matters to him in the slightest - he simply gathers up his paper, gives a slight nod to the crowd, and exits the stage to make way for the next speaker as quickly as possible.

It’s like a weight has been lifted off his chest, only for it to be let go and come crashing right back down.

_ Alright, man,  _ he thinks, out to whatever remaining entity of Ryan’s consciousness that might be listening.  _ You got me. You win. See you around. _

-

**Entertainment Weekly**

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom  _ Rules The Box Office Again; Holds Off  _ Uncle Drew  _ And  _ Sicario: Day of the Soldado

**ABC News**

_ DEVELOPMENT: Silicon Valley Executive Fired In 2017 For Offensive Tweets Being Held In Contempt Of Court For Failure To Appear At Compulsory Hearing _

**NPR**

_ A Lifetime Investment: Big Money Pours Into Battle For Abortion’s Legality _

“Shane. Have you seen Ryan today?”

He starts, yanked out of his afternoon headline-skimming session by Sara’s hand on his shoulder. He’s the only one at the desk; most of the other producers that share his workspace are out back helping the Pero Like folks film a stereotype-related video, but because Shane’s floor has no shortage of generic white dudes to use, his presence wasn’t required this time.

Taking out his earbuds, he’s in the middle of forming the phrase “no, I don’t think so,” but the words drop dead in his mouth when he turns to look up at her and sees pure, acute panic.

A face is worth a thousand words, as the saying sort of goes, and right now Sara’s face is hammering out a frantic SOS from the bridge of a sinking ship.

“No. He was gone yesterday, too, and he hasn’t been answering my texts. You haven’t seen him either?”

Sara sniffles, taking her phone out of her pocket. She’d just been crying over this, Shane can tell. “No. I figured he was sick. But his phone is off and he’s not answering me either - messages, emails, nothing. And when I checked Find My Friends…” She turns her phone screen towards him. On the contact-tracking GPS map, Ryan’s dot is scattered far east of the tight concentration of Buzzfeed employee dots, out near the country club in La Cañada. “...his latest location is from Sunday night, all the way out there.”

Okay, that’s weird. “Wait, what the hell’s he doing in La Cañada?”

“I have no idea, but that was from Sunday, it’s Tuesday now, he’s probably not even  _ there  _ anymore, and even if he was, he probably doesn’t have his phone on him,” Sara shoots back all in one breath, her voice doing that telltale rise in pitch. “ _ My  _ question is, why has his phone been offline for so long? Is he stranded somewhere?”

Shane thinks about it, weighing possible options… Jesus, it’s like he’s in Ryan’s head, writing an episode of  _ Unsolved _ . Just as well. “Let’s… let’s just check with Jen first to see if he called in sick this week, and if not, then we’ll call his parents. Okay?”

“Should we report him missing?” she chokes out. He could never stand seeing her like this: body tense and expression pained, anxiety personified.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he says softly, getting up from his chair and holding out his arms to her. She lets out a little hiccuping sob and wraps her arms around his waist, burying her face in his chest. He catches her back and strokes her shoulder blade with his thumb; it’s still familiar, even after all this time, but disconnected from its original context. “You know Ryan. He probably wanted to go off the grid to  _ get back in touch with himself  _ for a few days or some SoCal crap like that. He’s okay. He’ll be back before we know it.”

“I sure fucking hope so,” she replies thinly, breaking herself away from him and reaching for the box of Kleenex on his desk. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

He reaches down under his desk and grabs his little wastebasket, offering it for Sara’s discarded tissue. “I know. But Ryan does a lot of shit that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

She half-laughs, pushes her hair back out of her face, gives him a strained smile. “Promise you’ll let me know if you hear anything?”

Nodding, he returns the same tight-lipped expression. He knows that Jen will put all this worrying to rest; she’ll explain that Ryan’s doing a secret shoot for a surprise video, that he didn’t want anyone knowing where he and his crew were, that he’s totally fine. “You’ll be the first to know.”

-

It’s nightfall by the time people start filing out of Holy Trinity, having properly paid their respects and given their condolences, leaving behind mostly members of Ryan’s family in the fellowship hall. Shane lingers around, perhaps for longer than he should, carefully examining every picture and memento of Ryan’s twice, three times, four. Looking at the photos with the two of them in them send little pangs of wistfulness through his heart - he can remember taking all those pictures so clearly, how joyful and animated and  _ himself  _ Ryan was in those moments.

At the end of the day, Shane can only hope that he wasn’t in pain when...it happened. It’s all any of them can hope for now.

He hears someone approach, and he turns just in time to register that the hand clapping him on the shoulder is Andrew Ilnyckyj’s. “Hey. Great speech earlier.”

“Thanks, man.”

Andrew audibly exhales, taking a look at the particular picture on the wall that Shane had been focusing on. It was taken at Ned and Ariel’s Fourth of July party last year; Ryan, Shane, Andrew, Steven, Adam, and Chris Reinacher are all cheers-ing glasses of lemonade (Chris’ was most definitely spiked) and grinning overenthusiastically at the camera. Even Adam is smiling, teeth and all.

“Pretty fucked up what happened to him, huh?”

It’s searingly blunt, in predictable Andrew fashion, but it’s the one detail about this whole shitshow that everyone’s been tiptoeing around. No one wants to mention how they found Ryan’s body two hours out from Hollywood, in an entirely different county. No one wants to mention that half of his flesh was inexplicable burnt to a crisp. No one wants to mention that he was so unrecognizable that they didn’t even let his parents  _ see his corpse  _ before they threw it in the oven.

The way everyone’s been carrying on, you’d think that Ryan had died an elderly, wizen man at the ripe age of eighty-seven. Not before he even had the chance to hit thirty, found dead Isdal Woman-style, for no reason at all.

“Understatement of the year.”

Andrew turns away from the photo, towards Shane. “Are the cops looking into it?”

Too uncomfortable to meet Andrew’s eye, he keeps his gaze fixed on the wall. “They’re investigating, yeah.”

“And they questioned you?”

He grits his teeth, reliving in his head what was easily the longest two hours and forty-five minutes of his life. The sterile waiting room, the soundproof interrogation chamber, the accusatory tone of the lead detective that with every pointed question made him feel like somehow, in some way, it was his fault Ryan was dead. Like he could’ve prevented it somehow.

“M-hm.”

“Sara too, right?”

Shane quells the urge to not-so-politely tell Andrew to please leave him the hell alone now, thanks. He doesn’t wanna think about Sara. He doesn’t wanna think about Ryan. He doesn’t wanna think about how utterly, supremely God-awful this all has been. So he wills himself not to, and doesn’t answer.

They marinade in silence, a little longer than comfortable, each looking intently at something without really seeing it. He can just  _ hear _ the cogs turning in Andrew’s weird mysterious head, trying to say something vaguely comforting but not knowing where to start. But he starts anyway.

“I know how it was.” A thoughtful pause. “Towards the end.”

Irritation twists itself into dread faster than Shane can keep up with; his stomach bottoms out, falling, falling.

“Towards the end,” he repeats, a hollow echo.

Andrew sighs again, more weighed-down, and Shane wants to grab that sigh and shove it back down his throat. “C’mon, Madej, level with me. I’m not blind. You’re taking this really hard, and not in the ‘losing a best friend’ way. In the ‘widowed old lady’ way.”

Shane says nothing, just stares down at his feet. He fears if he looks Andrew in the eye and faces this truth head-on, his insides will shrivel up and he might really, truly implode into nothingness.

“These past few months…how you two were acting. I could see what he meant to you,” Andrew continues, and Shane swears he feels his blood running hotter in his veins. “What you meant to him.”

Enough, enough,  _ enough _ . This is the shit that’s been eating him alive from the inside out for  _ days _ , and for Andrew to just...read his mind like that? Air out his dirty laundry like it’s  _ nothing? _

“Well, good for you,” he snaps defensively, his temper finally getting the best of him as he turns to stare Andrew dead in the face, who reflexively takes a step back in alarm. He has a handful of inches on Andrew, and he’s practically looming over him. “But quite frankly _ , Ilnyckyj, _ I really don’t think it’s any of your goddamn business.”

It takes a moment for Andrew to readjust, from getting a glimpse of this new, unfamiliar emotional mask of Shane’s, but he stands his ground nonetheless as he shoots a pointed look towards Ryan’s family across the room. Shane looks in turn, and one of Ryan’s little cousins is staring at them, clutching a yellow stuffed duck to her chest, saucer-eyed.

Guilt rises up hot under his collar as he hurriedly turns and retreats, fingers pressing into his temples. “Jesus, I’m losing it,” he mutters weakly. “I- I’m so sorry, Andrew, really. I don’t...I just...”

He trails off, but Andrew doesn’t accept the apology, nor does he move from the corner that Shane had backed him into. Instead, he just stands there, undoubtedly pondering something again. God, Andrew and his damn  _ pensivity. _

“Look,” he finally says, firmly but not unkindly. “I get it. I really do. It sucks beyond belief. But…” He pauses again, gathering more words, and Shane turns back towards him again. “You and I both know that you gotta be honest with yourself about a few things.”

“Like  _ what _ , Andrew?” He throws out his hands in a sweeping gesture, very ‘Take Me or Leave Me’-esque. “What do you want from me? What do you want to hear?”

Andrew throws him one of his signature razor-sharp glares. “I don’t want to _hear_ anything,” he shoots back, his voice solemnly, dangerously low. “I just want you to get a hold of yourself, take stock of your own emotions like a fucking _adult_ , and quit taking out your repressed bullshit on everybody else. It’s not cute.”

Shane opens his mouth to retort, realizes belatedly that he has nothing to say, shuts his mouth again.

“If you’re gonna make it through this in one piece,” says Andrew, gesturing vaguely around them, at everything bearing Ryan’s likeness, “you’re gonna have to come to terms with some seriously depressing shit.”

Shane doesn’t know whether to cry, laugh, or both. He can’t even speculate as to what Andrew’s specifically referring to. The amount of ‘seriously depressing shit’ about this situation could fill an encyclopedia, the Rose Bowl, a deep-ocean trench. The Ryan Bergara-shaped hole in his heart.

He doesn’t even bother trying to make his half-hearted smile look remotely convincing. “Well, guess I’d better get comfortable, huh? ‘Cause I’ve got a feeling that’ll take a while.”

Andrew smiles back, empathy uncharacteristically warm in his eyes. “Well, hey, man. Whatever it takes. Right?”

_ Whatever it takes,  _ Shane repeats in his head. Of course, the unspoken tack-on to the end of that mantra must be:  _ without killing yourself, physically or otherwise.  _ “Right. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Andrew heads for the door, and Shane watches him go.

Then, he stops. Turns back to Shane again.

“That thing you said earlier? About...honoring him through our actions?”

Shane nods wordlessly.

“That was really good. Take your own advice.”

He keeps watching Andrew walk away, wondering what the hell  _ that  _ could have possibly meant, when out of the corner of his eye he spots someone in his peripheral. He looks, just in time to see a tall, black-clad figure slipping out the emergency exit door in the back of the hall.

_ Take your own advice. _

The room is nearly empty now, save for a handful of Ryan’s family and a couple volunteers taking down decorations, but Shane is busy stewing against the wall.

_ This week on  _ Buzzfeed Unsolved, _ we discuss the harrowing and puzzling disappearance - and possible murder - of Ryan Bergara in Palm Springs, California. _

_ Was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time, the victim of a random killer’s wrath? Or could it have been a much more sinister premeditated crime of passion? _

_ Let’s get into the theories. _

-

Amateur criminal investigation, as Shane discovers quickly, is a lot more difficult than Ryan always made it seem.

For starters, when he tries to go back to the coroner’s office in Riverside County on Tuesday for more info about Ryan’s autopsy, the lady at the reception desk gets...weird.

“I’m sorry,” she says, returning to the counter empty-handed after Shane asks to see the public file, “there’s no one by that name in our records.”

“No one by that- that can’t be right,” Shane scoffs. “They took him straight here after they found…” He almost says  _ his body, _ stops himself. “He has to be on file.”

Almost methodically, she reaches behind the counter, procures a white business card, and slides it across the table to him. “You can give the coroner a call if you’d like.”

Shane feels the uneasiness clawing up against his ribcage. “You don’t understand, he- I know he was cremated here. It was all over the news. Please, could you check again?” he practically begs, cringing internally at how pathetic he sounds. “Ryan Steven Bergara, D.O.B. 11-26-1990. He’s there.”

The frown lines between her eyes wrinkle deeper, and her lips purse together ever so slightly. “I can assure you, sir,” she says, chewing on each syllable deliberately, “he’s not.”

Rather than turn this into A Whole Big Thing like he’s tempted to, Shane chooses instead to channel some of Andrew’s constructive criticism and bow out of the altercation gracefully while he still can. Without another word to the reception lady, he curtly pockets the business card and leaves, making a mental note to call the coroner later to hopefully get some answers about Ryan from someone who actually wants to, oh, he doesn’t know,  _ do their damn job. _

Online research comes up mostly empty, too. The only publicly-available information is from the original  _ LA Times  _ death notice, and most of the specific details about Ryan’s case file are being held classified by the Riverside County police while they investigate. He does, however, manage to get sucked into the comment threads under Ryan’s formal obituary that Jonah posted to the site last Friday:

_         Can’t believe this is the news I woke up to today :( Praying for Ryan’s family and friends. Rest in peace <3 _

_         Maybe an unpopular opinion, but all signs point to suicide to me. He secluded himself from everyone right before he died, he did it really far away, and he was acting weird in all his videos leading up to it...Really a shame, especially when you think about how “woke” Buzzfeed acts about mental health awareness. _

_         anyone who thinks ryan killed himself is TOTALLY DELUSIONAL. its OBVIOUSLY a cover up. if you were REALLY an unsolved fan youd know that _

_         Shiiiiit. that’s crazy. Shane might want to watch his back now. _

Reading that last comment chills him down to the bone. He quickly flicks off his monitor display and stands up from his desk, determined to go get some fresh air, trying not to mull over it too hard.

Just as he reaches for the handle on the door leading to the front hallway, he hears a sharp, high whistle from behind. He turns to see Jen, headphones around her neck, laptop under her arm. “Hey there, big man,” she greets him, giving him an awkward little arm-punch. “How you holding up?”

“Uh...fine,” he answers cautiously, internally bristling as he realizes that Andrew was right, everyone  _ is  _ treating him like a grieving widow. “Yeah. Fine. What’s up with you?”

“Nothing much. But, um, I’ve been meaning to ask you if you wanted to take a look at the first cut of the video.”

‘The video,’ Shane knows, refers to the tribute video that’s soon to be published by Buzzfeed in Ryan’s honor. Quinta sent out a company-wide email last week, calling for staff members to send in any light-hearted footage they have of Ryan to be compiled together. Shane has an endless amount, so he submitted a handful of his favorites: one of Ryan attempting a terrible cartwheel in the grass at Plummer Park, another one of Eugene shoving Ryan’s head into his own birthday cake last year, yet another of him and Shane eating ice cream cones in one of those ridiculous hooked-arm poses.

There are some of his other favorites, however, that he didn’t submit. Those will always be just for him.

“Yeah, of course. Did you want me to do any editing on it, or…”

“No, not exactly editing. I wanted more of a second opinion,” Jen says, brow furrowed with the concentration of choosing the right words. “I know you guys were really close, so I want to make sure it really...captures his essence, you know?”

Shane tries his damndest not to laugh at that, but ends up guffawing in her face anyway. She gapes at him, equal parts hurt and startled.

“ _Captures his essence,_ ” he wheezes. “What- what are we making, a perfume? _Eau de Bergara?_ ”

Jen shakes her head, almost imperceptibly, and starts to head towards her desk. “I’ll email you the raw file later. Get back to me tomorrow, would you?” she calls over her shoulder, throwing him a little two-finger salute.

“Sure thing,” he calls back, even though he never actually agreed to.

-

Later that night, in his apartment, he tosses a bag of popcorn in the microwave and goes to set his laptop down on the couch. He’s been mentally steeling himself all day, the email from Jen sitting near the top of his inbox, a constant reminder.

In the kitchen, he pours himself a glass of orange juice - ever since they filmed the OJ Simpson episode back in Season 1, he’s developed a thing for it, almost like Pavlov-style classical conditioning - and waits for the microwave timer to go off. When it does, he carries the glass and the popcorn precariously into the living room, taking care not to spill.

Perched on the edge of the couch, he munches on his Orville Redenbacher’s as he pulls up his email and finds Jen’s message. His mouse hovers over the video file for a moment, and he takes a deep breath before he clicks.

_ “Hey you! Why don’t you introduce yourself to the folks at home?” _

Shane recognizes Ashly’s voice from behind the camera. In front of the camera is Ryan, bent over the Buzzfeed HR director’s desk, filling out a form.

Video Ryan looks up at Ashly, at the camera, and it knocks the wind out of Shane a little bit. He looks so youthful, so earnest.

_ “Wait, sorry, hold up,”  _ Video Ryan says, quickly ducking back down to make a few last marks on the form, then stands fully upright and grins.  _ “Hey, I’m Ryan Bergara, and I’m from LA County.” _

_ “And as of today, where do you officially work?” _

_ “Buzzfeed!”  _ Video Ryan exclaims, flashing two thumbs-up as Ashly ‘ _ wooo’ _ s in the background, before it cuts to the next clip.

They come right after the other, almost endlessly. Saved Snapchat stories of people bothering Ryan at his desk while he’s working. Various behind-the-scenes  _ Unsolved _ shenanigans. Ryan putting weird shit in his mouth that people dared him to eat for a video. Ryan riding the merry-go-round at the LA County Fair, looking far more overjoyed than any adult man should be on a children’s amusement park attraction. Eugene and Zach burying Ryan up to his neck in sand at Santa Monica Beach.

Ryan, asleep in the backseat of TJ’s car on the way back from a shoot, his head against Shane’s shoulder. Shane’s on-screen self, not noticing Devon recording from the passenger’s seat, gazing out the window, then closing his eyes and resting his own head on Ryan’s.

The clip is only about seven seconds long, but it feels like an entire lifetime has passed before the next one plays.

And then, before he knows it, the whole thing’s over, and he’s faced with nothing but his own reflection in the black computer screen.

The room is so cold, suddenly.

It’s a long, long time before he can make himself get up off the couch and go to bed.

-

“Helen and I broke up yesterday.”

_ Thar she blows, _ Shane thinks. Ryan’s been acting weird all day - keeping his head down in the office, barely making eye contact with anyone, eating lunch in monk-like silence - so Shane invites him over to watch the Lakers home game on TV over Thai takeout and Lagunitas IPAs. He’s found over the years that when something’s weighing particularly heavy on Ryan’s mind, he’s much more inclined to open up about it while in a state of relative non-sobriety.

Shane quickly scrambles for the remote to mute the game. “Are you serious?”

“Serious as the plague,” Ryan answers, between sips of beer. “The Dancing Plague of 1558.”

“1518,” Shane corrects instinctually, mentally kicking himself as soon as it leaves his mouth because  _ now is not the time, you dick _ . “But...Jesus, Ryan. I’m so sorry.”

“Well,” Ryan says on an exhale, deflating. “Nothing you can do.”

Shane starts to reach his hand out from across the couch to touch Ryan’s shoulder, reconsiders, pulls back. It doesn’t seem right; it feels creepy rather than comforting.

“What, uh, what happened? You wanna talk it out?”

For a painfully interminable moment, Ryan says nothing, and for the very first time since they’ve met, Shane feels overwhelmingly inadequate in his role as Ryan’s friend. Sure, he’s coached his fair share of buddies through their breakups, but never like this. Never him.

He’s just about to open his mouth and say something else that he thinks might sound halfway supportive when Ryan finally murmurs, so quiet that Shane can barely hear him: “It’s all my fault, man. I fucked it all up.”

“What? What do you mean?”

He tucks his legs up onto the couch, crossing them. “She just got offered a great position at a huge firm in Philly last week. Day before Halloween. But she told me that she didn’t want to take it,” he says, his face contorting ever-so-slightly into a troubled grimace, “because that would make planning our ceremony a logistical nightmare. You know, traveling back and forth across the country so much and everything.”

It’s barely ever occured to Shane before that Ryan and Helen still need to actually put the ring on it and go and _get_ _married_ because in his mind, they already have. “Okay.”

“And I had to…” The most accurate descriptor Shane can pin on Ryan’s expression is fear _ ,  _ but there’s something else there as well, something foreign and veiled. “...I had to fucking look her in the eye and tell her to go take the job because I can’t marry her, Shane. I just...I can’t.”

Shane blinks, uncomprehending. If Ryan’s a man of consistency, then Helen is what he’s always had to show for it. They just celebrated their five-year anniversary earlier this year - Shane would know; that party gifted him with one of the most brutal hangovers of his life - and once you’ve subscribed to the fleeting ephemerality of life in LA, five years is nearly an eternity.

“Wait, you- why not?”

“I don’t know. And I hate that I don’t. Because I still love her. I love her so fucking much, dude.” Ryan turns to look at him, more worn than Shane has ever seen him. “But I haven’t been in love with her for a long time.”

A strange lump forms at the bottom of Shane’s throat, and he swallows it immediately. “How long, you think?”

“Five months, maybe. I had an existential crisis about it while we were at Disney, which isn’t something you want to do when you’re on your anniversary trip.”

“That it is not. Why didn’t you...talk about it with her? Before?”

Ryan rubs his eyes and breathes a tired sigh. “Because I was scared shitless, dude,” he admits after a moment, barely above a whisper. “All this time, I’ve  _ never _ had a reason to feel like that. She’s amazing. We barely ever fight, ever. So I- I figured I was just in some sort of weird funk, you know? Like, getting complacent and everything. I read that this kind of thing happens at some point in a lot of long-term relationships. And it was right before we started filming the new Supernatural season, so I was hoping that the shoots would snap me out of it, since I wouldn’t be seeing her as much when we go off to shoot on location.” He ends his assessment with a jarring smile, forced and artificial, like he’s trying to psych himself into his own theory.

Something familiar clicks in Shane’s mind, a long-repressed feeling that’s quietly threatening to come crawling back out into view.

“But they didn’t.”

Ryan’s smile falters, with the release of the taut laughter lines around his mouth. “No. They didn’t.”

“How come?”

He turns his attention halfheartedly back to the TV, at the players running back and forth across the court in silence. “Who knows. You tell me.”

It’s a rhetorical request, but Shane wants more than anything to spill his guts to Ryan - half-formed conclusions drawn from the peculiar ache he feels pressing against his ribs whenever Ryan mentions Helen; the things he thinks about when he’s lying in bed trying to fall asleep, kept awake by his own restless inner monologue; the unspoken, shame-laden reasons why he and Sara didn’t make it through their third summer.

But he’s not ready to say any of it, and Ryan’s certainly not ready to hear it. They both may never be ready, ever, for the rest of their lives.

“Do you have any idea,” Ryan says slowly, after a moment, “how terrifying it is to wake up one morning, and look at the woman you’ve spent half a fucking  _ decade  _ with, and not feel a goddamn thing?”

A joyless memory of Sara, how crestfallen she looked after Shane finally gathered the nerve to sit her down for The Talk, flits through his mind.  _ Actually, yeah, kind of,  _ he almost says, but again, not the time.

Ryan seems to read his mind, because he peers at Shane as he reaches for the remote across the coffee table, and his eyes are carrying a different weight to them, in a way.

He unmutes the TV, and that’s the last time they talk about it for a while as they both pretend to watch the rest of the game.

-

He’d already made his peace with the fact that he’d never hear  _ that _ ringtone ever again, but maybe he didn’t have to, because now he’s blinking his eyes open to it.

From Shane’s nightstand, his phone is vibrating persistently along to a tinny rendition of the  _ X-Files _ theme music. The dream-memory he was having, so concrete and real in his head, slips further and further away from him with each passing second he’s awake, but it’s swiftly replaced with paralyzing apprehension.

That’s Ryan’s ringtone.

His phone is face down, so he’s eagle-eyeing it in complete darkness as he clambors out of bed and steps far away from the nightstand. He waits out the call, back nearly pressed against his closet door, and when the music finally stops he lets out a breath he wasn’t even aware he was holding.

He’s too scared to move at first, and he nearly jumps out of his skin after a long beat when his phone gives off a telltale  _ ping _ . A voicemail notification.

Newly impelled, he forces himself to take one step towards the nightstand, then another, and another, until his trembling hand is hovering over the phone. He picks it up gingerly, like he’s handling a bottle bomb, and turns it over.

**Ryan Bergara** now

        Voicemail     

**Ryan Bergara** 1m ago

        Missed Call

Quick as a flash, he swipes on the notification and finds the new message, only eleven seconds long. His pulse begins to beat stronger in his ears, but he decides firmly that he’s gonna ride this wave of fear-fueled adrenaline as far as it’ll take him, and clicks on it.

It’s just static. Dull, pins-and-needles radio static.

He stands there, replaying the voicemail until his thumb is sore, thinking that can’t be it, that  _ can’t be it, _ there  _ has _ to be more. He listens like his phone is the spirit box, listens harder and harder each time for voices, background noises, anything that might be a vital clue, even grabbing his nice headphones from on top of his dresser at one point to see if they’ll reveal any hidden secrets.

There aren’t any. Or if there are, they don’t make themselves known.

After maybe the twentieth time playing it back, he starts to debate whether to call back or not. He posits that one of four things might happen if he does:

1) No one will pick up (likely)

2) Someone will pick up (slightly less likely)

3) Ryan will pick up (only if this were that atrocious  _ Unfriended _ movie), or

4) A portal to Hell will open up beneath his feet, and he’ll be swallowed by Lucifer’s blazing inferno, never to be seen again.

He genuinely can’t say which of those outcomes would be more terrifying.

Perhaps the biggest mystery of all, it occurs to him just then, is  _ how _ Ryan’s phone is calling him. They didn’t find it with him on the scene at all, and it was assumed he left it somewhere in La Cañada, his last known location. But it’s password-protected, Shane’s seen him type his code in too many times to count. Who found the phone? How’d they get the password? If they didn’t know it after all, how’d they get Shane’s number? Why did they call  _ him? _

He’s spinning a speculative roulette wheel, shuffling rapid-fire through explanation after explanation that could somehow rationalize how or why someone would want to make it appear as if Ryan was calling him up to chat from beyond the grave.

Unless.

“No,” Shane says aloud, a verbal rebuttal of the very slightest mental suggestion. “No, no, no,  _ absolutely not _ .”

It’s crazy. It’s idiotic, it’s nonsensical, it’s outrageous, it’s asinine, it’s every applicable adjective you’d find in the thesaurus that Ryan consulted to write  _ Unsolved  _ episode titles. It is, in the very most accurate sense, beyond the bounds of possibility, because the window of opportunity for it to be true had closed seven days ago, never to be opened again.

Death is, after all, irreversible. And Ryan is, by all reputable accounts, dead.

Out of nowhere, his exhaustion hits him like a thirty-ton truck, and he winces when he checks the time on his phone - nearly four in the morning. He decides to chalk all this nonsense up to delusional sleep brain and to AT&T reassigning Ryan’s old number to some unsuspecting sap who had the misfortune of wrong-number-dialing Shane in the middle of the night.

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, he thinks as he climbs back into bed, but he  _ refuses  _ to let it tear him away from his precious sanity, and that’s that on that.

-

It’s a day or two after Buzzfeed publishes Ryan’s tribute video that everything really starts to fall off the rails.

The video climbs to the top of the YouTube Trending list almost immediately, garnering nearly a million views within eight hours. Floods of likes and supportive comments come in from viewers all around the world, mourning Ryan’s loss and celebrating his life alike. There are just a few too many zealous comments, for Shane’s taste, about the car clip; like all the fan letters from last week, he simply pushes them out of sight and out of mind.

Besides, he’s far more preoccupied with the news delivered to him over the phone by the Riverside County Sheriff himself, after Shane’s many, many calls to the station over the course of the week.

“...Unfortunately, we don’t have a clear answer about the cause of Mr. Bergara’s death. What we can say is that our team has ruled out any scenarios that involve foul play -”

“Wait. Wait, wait, excuse me. You have no idea how he died, but you’re gonna go ahead and rule out foul play anyway? How does that make _any_ sense?”

“Mr. Madej, I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, but I can assure you we’ve strongly considered foul play as a factor, but we were eventually able to rule it out.”

“And  _ how _ were you able to rule it out? Please enlighten me, I beg of you.”

“Mr. Madej,” the Sheriff repeats, his impatience palpable over the line. “I understand this is a very difficult time for Ryan’s loved ones. But I do  _ not  _ appreciate being talked down to.”

Fuming, Shane’s grip tightens around the phone. He peers out the glass door of the conference room he’s holded himself up in; he’s attracting a couple concerned stares from interns. “I’m sorry, sir. As you were saying.”

The Sheriff huffs. “Anyway. After careful consideration, there are two probable explanations. The first, and most likely, is suicide, by way of self-immolation - in other words, he set himself on fire.”

Shane’s gut takes a nosedive.

“Did- were there any matches found? Near him? Any…gasoline, or anything?”

“No, no sign of any tools used to carry out the immolation. But it’s quite likely they burned up with him.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, trying in vain not to imagine Ryan flicking alive a Bic lighter, holding it to his own bare flesh.

“Okay.”

“The second explanation is that he may have fallen victim to a small brush fire in the area.”

“A...a  _ brush fire. _ ”

“Yes. A brush fire. It’s not- not entirely unlikely, given all the heightened wildfire activity lately and whatnot.”

_Bullshit,_ Shane wants to scream into the receiver. _Complete, utter bullshit._ _You’re a fucking liar and you know it._

Instead he inhales through his nose, counts to three, exhales slowly. “Do  _ you  _ think it was a brush fire, Sheriff?”

The Sheriff is quiet for a moment. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Madej, I’m not so sure either explanation can really sufficiently explain what happened.”

“So you  _ do _ believe it might’ve been foul play.”

“Mr. Madej…”

“No! N-no. Hear me out,” Shane sputters, brain working faster than his mouth can keep up with. “If Ryan _really_ were to pass himself on to- to the Great Beyond, it would _not_ be by setting himself on fire. That is quite a painful way to die, you might recall, and trust me, he was not one to put himself in the direct path of pain. Someone did this to him. I just…I know it.”

The Sheriff sighs into the phone, exasperated. “Well, regardless of how uncharacteristic it seems for him, and how ambiguous the true cause of death is, I don’t think our team can pursue a homicide direction with this case any longer. I’m sorry. There’s nothing else I can say about it.”

There are many, many things that Shane can say about it, like _why’d you cremate him before his parents had the chance to ID him?_ and _can you_ _explain why his death certificate isn’t even on file at the coroner’s office?_ and _how are you so sure that there isn’t more to the story here?_ and _no offense, but doesn’t this all seem really fucking fishy to you?_ and _what are you hiding?_

He says none of them.

-

The second call comes late Friday evening.

Everyone’s already left the office to go home to their family or go out to a bar, ringing in the sacred beginning of the weekend. Shane’s still at his desk, illuminated only by the weak light of one or two industrial lamps overhead, back sore from a whole day of bending over his computer with his terrible posture. He’s halfway through reading a 25,000-word investigative report he found on Google about the Isdal Woman, trying to piece together whatever similarities seem the most relevant, when his phone starts blaring _that_ ringtone again.

He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been keeping his ringer on full volume ever since Tuesday night, checking his phone more often than needed, grappling for another call, a message, a sign, anything.

So when  _ Ryan Bergara  _ flashes up on his screen this time, he springs into action, fumbling for his laptop as quickly as possible and opening his audio recording software (in the interest of a controlled experiment, he needs some sort of presentable data, after all). As soon as he’s got that up and rolling, he swipes across the screen to accept the call and puts it on speakerphone.

He doesn’t even realize that he’d kind of been neglecting to breathe until he just barely manages to rasp out a shaky “Hello?”

At first, there’s nothing. Not like the static from last time, but just…silence. So silent that he can hear his own heartbeat inside his head.

Then:

“Shane.”

It’s him, unmistakably, clear as day. Shane won’t ever be able to decide if this was just as he hoped or just as he feared.

“ _ Ryan, _ ” he manages to answer, before dissolving into tears. Any of his best efforts to remain composed are cast aside, like a dam that’s crumbling under the enormous weight of too much water. “Ryan, oh my God, oh my God, oh my  _ fucking  _ God,  _ Ryan… _ ”

“Shane. Shane, listen to m-”

“ _You_ _faked your own fucking death,_ ” he sobs into the phone, steadying his free hand around the thin metal leg of the desk. He feels like he’s hallucinating this. Is he hallucinating this? “Why the _fuck_ would you do that?”

“ _ Shane- _ ” Ryan tries to speak over him, but his voice forcibly cracks. “You gotta listen to me. I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Why did you-”

“I didn’t fake my death,” Ryan says. He sounds hoarse, like he’d just been screaming his lungs out at a rock concert. 

“Ryan, you w-”

“It was faked for me.”

Shane’s fingers squeeze around the phone so tight that his knuckles turn white. 

“You- no. What do you mean? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” And then, the question he should’ve asked from the start: “Are you okay?”

A sharp inhale from across the line. “Yeah. I’m okay. For the most part.”

“Oh, thank God. Thank fucking Jesus. Where are you?”

“I don’t know. The last thing I remember was...was walking to my car to go to Ralph’s. And then I woke up here.”

“Where is  _ here? _ ”

There’s a pause, a sharp exhalation. “I can’t tell you. Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you.” There’s a sharp  _ click _ -ing noise over the phone, one that Shane’s only heard in movies. “I’m on a pretty tight script.”

In a horrifying instant, all the dots start to connect themselves. The hastily-cremated body, the bizarre location they found him at, the missing cell phone, the dismissive receptionist at the coroner’s office, the dropped foul play charges, the first phone call.

“Ryan,” Shane says carefully, trying to ignore the very, very visceral sensation of ice in his veins. “Are you being held hostage?”

Ryan swallows so hard that Shane can hear it over the line, but that’s an answer in itself. “He paid off the police department to plant a...a fake body. And hold a fake investigation.”

_ Crazy idiotic nonsensical outrageous asinine.  _

“But...they questioned me. They fucking  _ interrogated _ me, Ryan! For  _ three fucking hours! _ ”

“I know, Shane.”

“I gave your  _ eulogy. _ ”

“I know. I know. I’m so sorry.”

Shane falls silent then, praying that this is the part where he wakes up, out of this literal goddamn nightmare.

“What-” he finally starts to say, faltering at first. “What does he want?”

Ryan takes a shuddering breath. “He wants one point three million,” he says, and Shane’s stomach drops. “From you.”

He’s almost certain he’s going to pass out.

“Ryan, I…I can’t. You know I don’t have that kind of money.”

“The amount must be paid in full by 11:59 PM on Friday, July 20th,” Ryan answers, suddenly methodical, like he’s now indeed reading from a script. He rattles off a bank account number and a routing number; Shane scrambles for a paper and pen from his desk to write them down with. “No part of this arrangement may be discussed with others, including but not limited to family, friends, employers, colleagues, and the authorities. Any and all transfers must be completed without causing higher-level investigations of any kind. Then, and only then, will Ryan Bergara be released alive. If any investigation ensues, or the complete balance is not paid by the specified date and time, he will be killed on site.” 

He recites that last bit with remarkable composure, considering Shane is  _ this close  _ to absolutely losing his shit.

“Ryan, please,  _ please  _ drop the bit already, it’s not funny anymore. Where the hell am I gonna get  _ a million fucking dollars _ in _ two weeks? _ Please tell me this is a joke.  _ Please tell me this is a joke. _ ”

It’s a last-ditch attempt at staying in the denial stage, because now he knows in his heart of hearts that this is surely not a joke. This is real life, very real life, a life in which Ryan is unbelievably being held for ransom for far more money than Shane has ever had over the course of his entire life combined.

A strange rustling from the other line, like that of a plastic bag. “I gotta go,” Ryan says in a rush, and then he hangs up, and it’s just Shane and the routing numbers.

Bewilderment gives way to numbness, which after a moment, in turn, gives way to utter hopelessness.

_ Must be paid in full. _

_ Then and only then. _

_ He will be killed on site. _

_ One point three million. From you. _

He doesn’t know how long he sits there crying - about Ryan’s life being at the mercy of some psychotic kidnapper, about the terrifying inadequacy of his own assets to pay off such a massive amount, about how there’s an excellent chance he will never see Ryan alive again.

Why Ryan? Why him? Why  _ them? _

Before long, not unlike on a certain night the week before, he runs out of tears. And that’s the worst sort of feeling, isn’t it? Hurting so badly but not being able to cry, to give your pain a tangible form?

All he can do is sit there, soundlessly, head in his hands.

Then, after what feels like hours, a new email notification chimes sweetly from his desktop computer.

Bleary-eyed, he straightens up and wakes up his display with a shake of the mouse. There, perched at the top of his work inbox, an unread message:

        GoFundMe  |  **An important update from GoFundMe** | today, 10:43pm

By muscle memory, he goes to delete it, but just as his cursor is hovering over the button, he gets the tiniest flicker of an idea.

He rereads the subject line, rereads the sender name. Opens the email.

Skimming the body of the message, phrases begin to jump out at him:  _ introducing a 0% platform fee, starting with personal campaigns! No limits on goal amounts, no deadlines! New opportunities to raise money for yourself, someone else, your business, or your community! _

He clicks the “Read More” icon at the bottom of the email; it redirects him to GoFundMe.com in a new tab. A slideshow makes up the main banner of the site, an endless stream of obviously staged but nonetheless well-shot pictures of smiling people, gleeful at how their fictitious lives have changed for the better thanks to some well-organized crowdfunding.

And in the center of the banner, a large green button:  _ Start a GoFundMe _

He clicks it.

His fingers begin darting nimbly over the keyboard, and he feels like his mind is not his own as he spins a funny little yarn in the campaign description box, fishes for a fitting photo from Ryan’s Instagram, thinks up some choice keywords to use as tags.

(Is this illegal? Absolutely.)

(Would he be facing some serious time in prison if someone took it upon themselves to poke a little harder at the flimsy-ass fabric of this story? Oh, most definitely.)

(Is he going to Hell for this? He figures God still owns a share of his Catholic-raised soul, so yes, probably.)

(Is it his only hope at maybe, just  _ maybe _ getting Ryan out of this unscathed?

He hates that he’s willing to bet on it.)

Before he can save the campaign - an idea that he’ll email Jen about asking for permission to publish tomorrow because quite frankly, it can’t wait until Monday - as a draft, he needs to give it a title.

It doesn’t take him long at all to think of it.

**In Honor of Ryan Bergara: Help Send Kids in Need to Disney World!**

-

“This is weird, man. You know that, right? Like, this is  _ really _ weird.”

They’re sitting across from each other at a table for two, at Fabiolus, a nice Italian restaurant in Hollywood that Ryan has always said he’s wanted to go to. Around them, servers hustle and bustle through the sea of white-swathed tables, and other customers chatter in low, pleasant tones. Shane looks on as Ryan tugs at the neck of his pale blue dress shirt, a telltale Ryan Freak-Out signal.

“Really? I never would’ve noticed. Monumental findings, Dr. Bergara, good going,” he says with a wry smile, offering up his glass of Cabernet in mock congratulations for Ryan to cheers against.

Ryan’s anxiety is replaced with soft-fronted disgruntledness, and he obliges -  _ clink!  _ \- with a roll of his eyes and a smirk of his own. “You think this is what Andrew and Steven feel like whenever they go somewhere fancy to eat? Y’know, how Steve always picks out some expensive-ass joint in Malibu or the Hills and Andrew’s just along for the ride?”

“How  _ dare _ you compare me to that absolute weakling Steven Lim. I’m wounded, Ry, absolutely wounded.” Shane’s never called him Ry before, at least as far as he can remember, but it’s  _ so  _ satisfying to watch Ryan’s eyes go wide as saucers when he says it. 

“Fair point, I take it back. For one thing, he’d probably only eat that linguini,” Ryan says, gesturing to Shane’s plate of pasta with his fork, “if there were gold flakes on it.”

“Sure. Or gold-infused parmesan, at least,” Shane offers, taking the last bite of the dish in question. “Besides, I’m definitely Andrew in this analogy.”

Ryan watches him chew, thoughtfully, the corners of his mouth tugging up ever so slightly, and it’s kind of making Shane squirm a little.

“What?” he says, as politely as he can through his mouthful of linguini.

“That color is great on you. Brings out your eyes,” Ryan answers, a little timidly, and Shane takes a glance down at his own forest green button-up. “I’ve never seen you wear it before.”

“ _ Now _ look who’s making it weird,” he teases, flicking his lapel to give his other hand something to do because they are definitely  _ not  _ trembling right now, thank you very much. “I bought it special for you.”

“Wait, really?”

“You wish. I got it from my aunt for Christmas.” He laughs as a tight-lipped Ryan flicks him off with his hand still on his wine glass, in the same way that you’d stick your pinky out when trying to be pretend-sophisticated. “Hey now, cool your jets. This is no place to throw a scene.”

“You’re fucking insufferable.”

“It’s a talent, really.”

For a moment, they just smile at each other like a couple of idiots, and Shane can feel that telltale buzzing, pins-and-needles energy in the base of his ribcage. It’s a feeling he recognizes, but not quite in the way he’s feeling it now, sort of like when you run a sentence through Google Translate and back again to its original language. Awkward. Maybe a little nonsensical, sure. But all the essentials are there.

“Why is it weird?” he finally asks.

Ryan’s brow creases. “Hmm?”

“This. Why is this so weird to you?”

“I mean…” Ryan says, a beautiful pink flush cropping up in his cheeks. “...I guess it’s not. We go out to eat all the time, just the two of us. But...now it’s different. Now it means something else.”

“And what does it mean?”

He huffs, exasperated, like he does when Shane makes an awful joke in the Hot Daga. “Dude, is this a date or an interview? I- why don’t  _ you  _ tell me what it means? Since you seem to have all the answers.”

The idea that Shane has “all the answers” is a rather gross overstatement. In fact, he’s only  painfully aware of all the answers he  _ doesn’t  _ have. He’d always been particularly fond of a quote he read in a copy of  _ Life’s Little Instruction Book  _ that his parents had at their old house in Schaumburg: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” Almost every time he opens his mouth, it’s about a topic he has at least a passing grasp of. It’s a tactic that’s led the people in his life to believe he’s much, much smarter than he actually is. 

But there are things that even thirty-two years of life and a bachelor’s degree just can’t teach you; for Shane, vulnerability is one of them. It took him a very long time to consciously unlearn the bullshit he internalized growing up, all that “boys will be boys” toxic masculinity that’s turned many a man Shane’s age into a cold, repressed bridge troll. He’s worked hard to combat those instincts, but at the end of the day, it’s still difficult to be so excruciatingly  _ honest _ with yourself all the time. He knows it’s certainly no different for Ryan, the crown prince of the kingdom of No Homo Land.

He likes to think he’s in touch with his emotions, for the most part, but the one thing he’s struggled the most with is being open. Not being so protective of his own heart, so terrified of building a connection with someone only for it to come crashing right back down, getting inevitably hurt in the process.

But he can put whatever’s left of his pride aside for this. This is too important not to.

“It means I have feelings for you,” he says as nonchalantly as he can muster, going all-in on the shock factor - which pays off spectacularly, because the look on Ryan’s face is  _ priceless _ \- “so I asked you if I could take you out for Valentine’s Day dinner.” He realizes he’s been twirling his fork around absentmindedly on his empty plate, gathering up phantom pasta. “Which worked. Clearly.”

They hadn’t actually discussed this part of it before. It had been an unspoken thing, ever since Ryan and Helen split up; Shane kept his distance for a while as Ryan took his time to recover. Soon enough, though, Ryan sprang back, peppering Shane with all sorts of invitations, almost fervently: _Come see_ The Last Jedi _with me again tomorrow, I know you want to, you geek._ _Wanna grab drinks later after we wrap Postmortem? Let’s try that new burger place by the Trader Joe’s. Are you free Wednesday night? I haven’t seen the new_ Criminal Minds _yet._

Shane has always been able to sense these grand shifts in Ryan’s demeanor, the ones that happen whenever he’s been doing some soul-searching. But he never expected to be the subject of one. Hoped for it, sure, but to  _ expect _ it? Presumptuous.

“That’s exactly what I mean!” Ryan exclaims, still reeling from Shane’s admittance. His hands go right to his forearms, squeezing hard enough to leave fingernail marks: a nervous, slightly defensive habit of his that Shane’s picked up on over time. “We’ve been friends for years. Literal  _ years! _ And now all of a sudden we’re not friends anymore. We’re...whatever this is,” he offers lamely, waving a hand over the table.

“What an eloquent turn of phrase. And don’t act like every relationship ever  _ didn’t _ start out as a friendship. How long were you friends with your last girlfriend before you started dating her?” He’s careful not to actually say her name. He’s not sure whether that still constitutes as ground he should be treading lightly on, and until (or better yet, if) they talk about it, he’d rather stay on the safe side.

Ryan raps his knuckles against the table a couple times, thinking. “Two years? Maybe one and a half? Yeah, sounds about right.”

“No further questions, Your Honor. In closing: it’s not weird to have feelings for your friends.” He picks up his glass, eyeing Ryan keenly. “Methinks you’re just not used to having feelings for men.”

The blush creeps back into Ryan’s face with a vengeance, though to be fair, it never really left. “Quit psychoanalyzing me, dickweed. You know, this- this whole thing was hard for me to work through, believe it or not. So the  _ least _ you can do is be halfway respectful about it.” 

The Ryan Freak-Out warning signs are returning at breakneck speed, and Shane feels a little pang of guilt watching Ryan’s features rearrange themselves in distress. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he says in earnest, and Ryan’s face softens.

After a moment of consideration, he moves his hand slowly, across the table, to rest on top of Ryan’s clenched fist, light enough so that Ryan could pull away if he wanted to. He lets his fingers brush across Ryan’s skin, mapping all the ridges of muscle, all the curves of bone.

“I’m really glad you’re here with me.”

Ryan looks up at him like he hung the moon, and that pins-and-needles feeling in Shane’s stomach comes back with a vengeance as Ryan relaxes his hand, his fingers curling up to find Shane’s. “Me, too. Couldn’t be gladder if I tried.”

Shane guffaws, so loud that his free hand flies over his mouth, as he’s subjected to Ryan’s shit-eating grin. “ _ Really _ , asshole? You really have to one-up me  _ right now?” _

They don’t let go of each other’s hands until their server brings the check around.

-

For the record, Shane does not consider himself - nor has he ever - to be a shining beacon of morality.

Sure, he donates to nonprofits. He’ll help the occasional old lady cross the street (which, honestly, is a situation that the Boy Scouts made him believe would happen a lot more than it actually does). If he finds a wallet on the ground, he’ll bring it into the nearest store and hand it to the cashier for safekeeping. All the run-of-the-mill, “Do a Good Turn Daily” type of things.

But sometimes, like everyone else, he pointedly ignores the little nagging voice of decency in his head in exchange for some sweet, sweet instant gratification. He’ll embellish a story he’s telling to make himself seem cooler. He’ll talk shit behind an obnoxious coworker’s back. He might even swipe a fiver out of that aforementioned wallet before handing it in.

But tricking people into giving money to a nonexistent charitable cause, only to rewire that money to a complete stranger, in exchange for the life of a guy he’s got the hots for? Not his finest work, he must admit.

He’s mentally justifying this whole shitstorm he’s brewed up by reassuring himself that it’s not  _ technically  _ money laundering, because the money’s not going to him. And it’s not like he’s forcing anyone to give their money. Besides, if they liked Ryan enough to donate to begin with, surely they wouldn’t mind their money going towards a more direct means of supporting him. Right?

Right?

The more he tries to do this cognitive dissonance gymnastics, the worse he feels. But like it or not, he’s in the thick of it now. All he can do is grab a machete and hack his way through.

**Shane Madej** <smadej@buzzfeed.com>

        to emielniczenko@buzzfeed.com + 86 others

_         Hey everyone, _

_         In light of recent events, I’m very pleased to announce that we’re partnering up with the folks at Give Kids The World Village in Orlando to raise some money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation in Ryan’s honor. Ryan loved Disney all his life, so in my opinion, there’s no better way to honor his memory than by making Disney World dreams come true for children with life-threatening illnesses. A GoFundMe campaign is now live (I’ve linked it below) and a site post with more details should be live within the hour. If you’d like to contribute financially, or even just by sharing, I encourage you to do so. Anything helps! _

_         Thanks and see you on Monday, _

_         Shane _

After looking it over upwards of a dozen times, he finally forces himself to hit send on the draft. He watches the little message icon  _ whoosh  _ over to the “sent” folder of his email sidebar, and he leans back against the couch as he anxiously waits for replies, nursing his Saturday morning coffee, fingers firmly hugging the ceramic even though it’s scalding hot.

They start pouring in soon after, and Shane’s insides twist up more and more as he reads each one:

_         SHANE! This is SO AMAZING!! Ryan would be so happy to see this <3 I shared the gofundme to my facebook so hopefully some other people will see it. Best of luck!! _

_         - Devin L _

_         Chipped in a few bucks and when my paycheck cashes I can put in some more. Really cool thing you’re doing man, respect. _

_         Gadiel DO _

_         Wow, what a special thing you’re doing for those kids! I know if it were ever my son in that position, that gift would be more priceless than you can imagine. By the way, Ariel’s friend from Carleton is a development manager with Make-A-Wish, so she said if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call her! _

_         Ned _

_         That’s the spirit. I’m proud of you, and he’d be too. _

_         Andrew  _ _ Ilnyckyj _

It’s not long before he feels like he might genuinely vomit.

_ IT’S A LIE,  _ he so badly wants to reply-all in all caps.  _ IT’S ALL A LIE, I’M A FUCKING LIAR, I’M SO SORRY, PLEASE HELP ME, THEY’RE GOING TO KILL HIM, HE’S GOING TO DIE, HE VERY WELL MIGHT ALREADY BE DEAD, SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. _

He settles for forcing himself to drink his too-hot coffee, grinding his teeth through the scorched tenderness it leaves behind in his mouth.

-

When it does happen, it goes exactly as uncouthly as he always thought it would.

It’s nearly midnight on the eve of their fifth date, their impressive picnic spread on the grass at Plummer Park long since eaten, the evening temperatures long since dropped below a comfortable late February chill, and the decision to retreat back to Ryan’s apartment to watch the rest of Season 5 of  _ Scandal _ on Netflix long since made. They’re halfway through one of the filler episodes, and Ryan’s head is nestled in the crook of Shane’s shoulder with his hand fixed lightly on Shane’s inner thigh, down towards his knee. Shane’s got an arm around Ryan, but his are so damn long and gangly - curse his vulture-like wingspan - that his hand just kind of rests in Ryan’s lap, but Ryan meets him halfway by entangling his fingers with Shane’s in a complicated little knot.

And then, there’s a moment when the hand on Shane’s thigh tightens its grip just so, when Ryan’s sitting upright and turning inward a little to face Shane more squarely, that he realizes exactly what’s happening. It’s the same way you feel when you trip, right as you begin to fall. Too early and too late all at once.

Ryan looks at him, with tender brown eyes and a warm close-lipped smile, and in that instant Shane has never wished more to have a photographic memory, so he could fix Ryan’s face in his mind and describe it to a sketch artist and get a watercolor print of it to hang on his wall. It’s the first time that he feels the smallest inkling of something much, much bigger. 

And then Ryan’s leaning in.

If Shane is self-proclaimed 80% leg, then Ryan is 53% lips, 45% tongue, and maybe 2% teeth, which sounds horrendous but works frighteningly well in this context. Besides, the emotional sensation of it all is far overshadowing the physical. Some sort of life force deep within Shane is humming with energy, some type of self-contained galvanism that almost makes him outright shiver as he draws a hand up from Ryan’s waist to the side of his face, thumb grazing his earlobe and the tips of his fingers pressing deftly against the base of his skull.

As far as first kisses go, it’s good. It’s  _ really  _ good (mostly because it’s  _ Ryan _ and just the fact that this is  _ actually happening _ is more than enough), but in terms of awkwardness and atmosphere it’s quite on par with that of two high schoolers, one for whom it’s their  _ very _ first and the other for whom it’s maybe their third or fourth but they’re still not well-versed by any standards. The jarring concurrency between this channeled energy and their real-life personages is making him bug out a little more than he’d care to admit.

At least he’s not alone; he senses Ryan is becoming oddly stiff under his touch, a disconcerting shift in enthusiasm from not even two minutes ago. After a little while, when he pulls back as cordially as possible to give Ryan a minute to collect himself (or reconsider this whole shebang entirely), he takes an honest-to-God  _ gasp  _ of air, like he’s snorkeling.

“Jesus, Ry, you okay?”

Ryan avoids Shane’s eyes as his hands fly immediately from Shane’s body to his own head, running them through his hair in a way that could be described as manic. “Yeah, yeah, fine. I’m fine.” He does not look fine. He looks like he might explode, detonate into a million pieces like a firecracker.

“I know the logistics of respiration can be tough to navigate here, but you gotta  _ breathe,  _ man,” Shane says, padding his overwrought concern with a quick nervous laugh. “Look, we don’t have to d- if you want to hold off...”

“No no no, I’m good, yeah, I’m fine, it’s all good,” Ryan babbles to himself as he shoots upright off the couch, bumping against the coffee table along the way, and begins pacing back and forth across the carpet. He’s got the most intense look on his face that Shane’s sure he’s ever seen on him, eyebrows knitted together and beads of sweat on his forehead catching the light from the ceiling fan bulbs. “All good, all good, all good.”

The worst sort of premonition pops unceremoniously out of a mental jack-in-the-box in the back of his mind; he’s seeing the end of this whole thing before it even had the chance to begin. “Ryan, seriously, what’s-”

Ryan stops dead in his tracks just then, and Shane trails off, waiting for him to say something. 

“Have you ever been with a guy before?” His face is unreadable; Shane’s not quite sure which answer he might want to hear.

“I...yeah, a few times.”

“When?”

“Once at Columbia. And three other guys before I started at Buzzfeed.”

Ryan exhales through his nose, long and steady. “Do any of our friends know?”

“Sara does. That’s about it, though.” Shane quickly registers Ryan’s quizzical look and decides to just answer the question he knows he’s about to ask: “I don’t really like to talk about it. And the whole time I was dating her, it just...wasn’t exactly relevant information.”

Ryan doesn’t answer him at first, and Shane’s trying to figure out why the hell he looks so damn  _ hurt  _ when he says:

“So. Is this not something you want people to know about? Like, are you just gonna sweep me under the rug like all those other dudes you’ve knocked boots with? Because if that’s the case, then this might as well be done right now because I won’t have it that way.”

_ Oh, Christ on a bike. _ “No. No, Ry, of course it’s not. I wouldn’t-”

“Are you  _ ashamed _ of us or something?” Shane’s never seen Ryan cry, not in three whole years of knowing him, but it’s looking like today might be that day. “Is  _ that _ what this is?”

Shane sighs, considers his options, then gently pats the couch cushion next to him, motioning for Ryan to sit back down, and he does. 

“I...I have no shame in being how I am, in liking men. I’m not saying that at all, so  _ please _ understand that’s not what I’m saying,” he prefaces, because he feels it’s very, very important here that he does that, and Ryan nods. “What I’m saying is that I have a not-so-great relationship with casual sex. With anybody. Besides Sara, and the two other girls I dated in my twenties, every single person I’ve been with was a one-night stand.”

Ryan sniffles but says nothing.

“Each time, leading up to it, I’d think I was ready for it, that I wanted it. And then it would happen, and I’d just...black out. No feeling. Not enjoying it, not  _ not  _ enjoying it, just going through the motions. They’d get off, I’d get off, and then it would be over and I’d wake up feeling like...like something had been taken from me.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. It’s hard to describe. I think...I think I was missing the caring aspect. Like, really  _ caring  _ for the person you’re with, like how I only did for the people I actually dated.” He’s only talked about this with Sara and his old therapist, so it’s only then that he realizes his body is actually shaking ever so slightly with the effort of saying it. “Once you have sex with someone you really love, you can’t get something like that again from just anyone, you know? You can’t recreate that intimacy.”

Ryan smiles a smile that’s almost a smirk. “I’d tend to agree with you on that one. So would the general population, might I add.”

Shane elbows him, earning an indignant  _ ow!  _ from him, but he’s glad to see that he’s not above being a smug little shit even after laying all his abandonment issues out on the table. “There was a long period of time, after I broke up with my second girlfriend, where I stopped hooking up entirely. Would you believe me if I told you I hadn’t had sex in almost two years when I started dating Sara?”

“ _ Two years? _ ” Ryan squeaks, and Shane throws his head against the back of the couch in laughter. “Jesus Christ, how- your nutsack must’ve been the size of  _ Utah!  _ How’d you even fuckin’  _ survive  _ that?”

“The right hand is a powerful, mystical thing,” Shane says with a mischievous toothy grin, wiggling the hand in question, which sends Ryan into his own fit of giggles.

When they’ve both gotten it all out, Shane places a hand on Ryan’s knee, his fingers long enough to trail down to the gentle flesh behind it, a pressure point. “Very long story short, this matters to me. You matter so, so much to me. I could never be ashamed of being with you. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of myself for making such a fine, top-notch selection.”

“Excuse you, ‘selection?’ What the hell am I, an Angus sirloin?”

Shane snorts. “ _ What am I, chopped liver? _ ” he jokes in his best Gilbert Gottfried voice, and Ryan cracks up all over again. “No, ‘course not. I’m more of a ribeye man myself anyway.”

“Solid choice.”

There’s a fantastic sort of brightness in Ryan’s eyes, like he’s being illuminated from the inside out, that’s giving Shane the irresistible urge to lean down and kiss him, so he does. And then they’re kissing again, no tension or hesitation or reservations, and Shane blessedly, unmistakably feels every second of it.

-

When the fundraiser goes live on that Saturday morning, he sets the goal at $100,000 at first, figuring that he’d raise the threshold in a few days when it started to get close, to encourage people to keep donating.

When he checks the donation total on Sunday morning after a restless sleep, he has to refresh the page eight times, thoroughly scrub down his laptop screen, and check the number from an entirely separate browser before he starts to believe it.

$143,581.

Already six figures.

At this rate, this nightmare could all be over in less than ten days.

For a few blissful moments he’s so relieved he could cry, but then the looming weight of reality begins to press back down on him. He’s primarily worried about the routing numbers, which decidedly do not belong to anyone at Make-A-Wish nor Give Kids The World Village. It’s a gamble either way, but he decides in the end that he’d rather _maybe_ get caught working with a fishy routing number as opposed to _most_ _definitely_ getting caught transferring more than a million smackeroos from his tiny local California bank account to that same fishy routing number.

Yes, it’s a gamble, but to gamble and lose here is to lose so, so much more than he ever bargained for.

He checks the data on the site post; there are thousands of Facebook shares and tens of thousands of supportive comments. Scrolling through them, whatever remaining relief he was feeling earlier begins to leach out as guilt takes its place. The thought of all these people putting him on a pedestal - praising him for his generosity and selflessness, calling him a hero, giving  _ their own money  _ to help make artificial dreams come true - is enough to make him lose it.

But he doesn’t lose it. Instead, he wills himself to keep it together, more together than he ever has before in his entire life.

He keeps it together through his late-morning jog through the neighborhood, his early-afternoon Trader Joe’s run, his late-afternoon lunch, his early-evening  _ Ruining History _ research session, his late-evening dinner, and his early-night Hulu binge, all the while refreshing the GoFundMe page. $287,328. Twelve days left.

He keeps it together on Monday through his meeting with his  _ Ruining History  _ editor, his lunch break, and his miscellaneous video editing sessions, all the while refreshing the GoFundMe page. $439,966. Eleven days left.

He keeps it together on Tuesday through his producers’ briefing, his  _ Debatable  _ shoot, and another edit session, all the while refreshing the GoFundMe page. $601,034. Ten days left.

He (barely) keeps it together on Wednesday through the long-dreaded talk with TJ, Devon, the production team, and the brand strategy director about just what they’re going to do with  _ Unsolved  _ now that it’s lost its most dedicated caretaker. It turns out Ryan was always on the right track all along: no matter how funny or entertaining Shane’s skepticism might’ve be on camera, it was Ryan’s enduring blind faith in the improbable that gave the show its soul. There is no disbelief without belief, after all.

“Leave the network as is, and open it up as a platform for the entire video production staff,” Shane says, finally putting in his two cents after nearly fifteen minutes of not contributing to the conversation. “We can post horror shorts and documentary-style pieces, like we’ve been doing to supplement the show.”

“And what about the show itself?” asks the brand strategy director, a woman who’s quite nice but clearly unaware of why they can’t just carry on with ‘the actual show’ like nothing’s happened. “It’s important for us to stick to the filming and airing schedule as much as possible. We can field applications around the office for a replacement host for you by next week. Or if you’ve already got a specific someone in mind, by all means, let me know.”

Shane’s looking her in the eye, but he still feels everyone else’s eyes swivel to him. “Um,” he says, trying to think of how best to professionally respond without scaring the dickens out of this poor uninvolved gal, and he feels Devon’s hand come to rest on his knee from under the table. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t believe that’ll be necessary.”

The director cocks her head to the side, and Shane can just  _ see  _ the bags of money burning to ash in front of her eyes. “Alright. So what I’m hearing is you want to make it a...solo project? In that case, transitioning to a podcast medium would make a little more sense, don’t you think?”

He just stares at her blankly for a moment. A _podcast!,_ he thinks. Like _fuck_ he’s going to make Ryan’s blood, sweat, and tears into a goddamn _podcast._

“With all due respect, it doesn’t really matter what I think,” he says to her instead, with his best customer service smile. “It’s not my show.”

$752,811. Nine days left.

He keeps it together all through Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, all the while watching the donation total slowly but surely creep its way across the green progress bar. $750k turns to $800k turns to $850k turns to $900k turns to $950k, and Shane finds that he was wrong about being all out of tears when he refreshes the page at home late on Saturday night and watches as the number changes from $999,982 to, miraculously, $1,000,007.

He nearly sprints to his bedroom, rummaging through his drawers until he finds the old rosary beads gifted to him by his grandmother for his First Communion, the metal of the little crucifix slightly rusted and the lacquered glaze of the beads long since worn away. At the foot of his bed, he gets down on his knees and fumbles his way through the first rosary he’s prayed in fifteen years, shins stinging with rug burn and face shiny with tears he doesn’t wipe away.

-

Right on par with his worst fears, the donations begin to slow down as the zero hour approaches; by Monday morning, the total’s only at around $1,075,000.

He does the math in his head on the way to the office, weaving his little Hyundai through the hectic West Hollywood traffic: if it keeps going at this exact rate, then the full $1,300,000 should all be accounted for by Friday afternoon. Key word: should.

In such fraught circumstances as these, “should” is not quite comforting enough for him, so he takes matters into his own hands and sprinkles one more little lie on top of this monster of a dishonesty shit sandwich.

“Hey, Naz,” he greets his old friend in the Social Media department (if you classify since last spring as ‘old’), having ventured down a floor to find her workspace.

Nazeli glances up from her computer, smiling around her bite of peach when she sees him. She holds up a finger as she chews and swallows. “Shane, my good sir, long time no see! How goes it?”

“Not too bad.” Could be much better. “You?”

“Well, I’ve been trying to think of a good caption for this Facebook share of a listicle about Japanese cats for, like, the past twenty minutes,” she gripes, showing him the draft of the post on her screen. “I mean, come on...it’s cats. It’s the Internet. What more can I say that  _ hasn’t _ already been said?”

He thinks for a second, then snaps his fingers and points at her. “That’s it. There’s your caption. A little tongue-in-cheek action, y’know.”

Nazeli juts her lower lip out, impressed. “Not bad, Mr. Madej, not bad,” she muses, transcribing her own words into the text box and hitting  _ post.  _ “Hey, maybe you should be the one down here bangin’ out captions and Tweets and all that good stuff.”

“Actually, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about,” he says slowly, and Nazeli must sense the nervous energy he’s giving off because she grabs the empty chair beside her and pushes it over to Shane for him to sit in. “Did you happen to see the GoFundMe campaign we’ve been running for Make-A-Wish kids?”

“Oh my God, no, but that’s  _ so  _ amazing. How much have you raised so far?”

“Just over a million.”

“ _ A million dollars?”  _ she practically yells in the middle of the crowded office, which, to Shane’s embarrassment, turns a number of heads. “Shane, that’s  _ crazy!  _ Just think how much that’s gonna do for all those kids!”

“Wait, what happened? A kid won the lottery?” one of Nazeli’s mousy-looking deskmates pipes up down the row.

“No, dumbass, Shane raised a million bucks for the Make-A-Wish Foundation,” Nazeli says, throwing an arm around Shane’s shoulder and beaming like a proud mom. “How awesome is that?”

“Very awesome,” another one of her lumberjack hipster-looking coworkers near them agrees, and Jesus Christ, this department has a  _ major _ eavesdropping problem. “What’s the occasion? Childhood Cancer Awareness Month or something?”

Unthinkingly, Shane goes to respond -  _ why yes, as a matter of fact, July is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month  _ \- but stops. He’d been all too ready to lie on autopilot, the effort of keeping up the constant charade finally manifesting itself into practiced technique. Isn’t that how the old saying goes?  _ Your actions become your character. _ “Oh, um, no. They reached out to me about a fundraising partnership.”

“Cool,” the guy replies, looking Shane up and down with a half-smile, appraising him. Shane worries for a brief nonsensical flicker of a moment that he’s telepathic, that he’s the only one able to see right through Shane’s grand charade. “Making a difference. Good for you.”

Shane forces a smile back at him, trying not to look like too much like how he feels, which is a two-timing sack of shit. “Thank you. ‘ppreciate it.”

“So Shane, what did you want to talk to me about?” Nazeli asks, and this time her entire desk’s worth of coworkers swivels their heads to look at him.

He clears his throat quickly, feeling like an insect pinned down under a microscope with all those eyes on him. “Uh...well, it was actually about, um...the campaign is about 2/3rds of the way to the goal, and I was just wondering if you’d be able to boost it on Facebook or something like that.”

A murmur ripples through the PR horde, and Nazeli’s face shifts to an unsteady smile. “Sure! Um, I already have all my Buzzfeed Video posts for today timetabled out, but tomorrow I could ma-”

“ _ No, _ ” Shane interjects sharply before he can stop himself, throwing a hand over his mouth the instant it leaves his mouth. It takes him a moment to notice that he’d also unthinkingly sprung up out of his chair, towering over Nazeli. He steps back quickly, running into his chair behind him on accident. From the PR team around him, he’s countered with nothing but silence and blank, incredulous stares.

“I’m so sorry. I mean...” he tries again sheepishly, much quieter this time. “...uh, the campaign has a deadline this week. So...the sooner the post goes out, the better.”

None of Nazeli’s coworkers speak a word, as if they’re terrified Shane might go ballistic if they say the wrong thing. What a positively sickening feeling: being deeply feared.

Finally, Lumberjack Hipster clears his throat. “I have an open 1:15 slot on Buzzfeed Community,” he says, stone-faced.

A wave of relief washes over Shane, but with the shame he’s steeping in, it’s a joyless victory. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I… It means a lot.”

He raises a condemnatory eyebrow at Shane, grabbing his mug of coffee from his desk. “Clearly,” he replies coldly, before walking off.

Once Lumberjack Hipster is out of sight, the cloud of hushed silence slowly dissipates among the PR team, but they’re all careful to avoid Shane’s eyes. Which is just as well; Shane figures he should get the hell out of here before he causes even more of a scene.

But just as he’s about to slink away to the elevators, a tap on his shoulder makes him turn back around. Nazeli’s looking up at him, concern welling up in her dark eyes.

“Hey. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I know losing Ryan must be really hard for you. So...I guess if you need to talk about it, I’m here for you, pal,” she says gently, and Shane nearly winces at the all-too-familiar hint of apprehension in her voice.

“Thanks, Naz,” he tries saying as kindly as possible, but it comes out strained. He turns and walks away without another word, leaving the only one left in his corner standing there alone.

He  _ desperately  _ needs to talk about it, bless her heart, but he can’t. He just can’t.

-

It turns out that the feeling of temporary disgrace after his first-floor blunder yesterday is far, far overshadowed by seeing the GoFundMe total bar be almost completely filled with green.

He’s  _ so  _ close, just $40,000 away, and after Nazeli posts her Facebook share in the late morning on Tuesday, Shane heads home early from the office and sets up camp in his living room again with his phone and laptop, refreshing the page violently and watching the remainder of the total bar’s white space disappear.

Minute by minute, hour by hour, the numbers edge closer and closer to the grand total, and when it hits $1,289,251, it crosses Shane’s mind for the very first time throughout this entire ordeal that he genuinely has no fucking clue what will happen once he hits the total.

Will Ryan be unceremoniously dumped on his doorstep, dazed and confused, with no recollection of the past three weeks? Will people believe it’s really him, after his “death” was so publicized? Will he start doing news station interviews, tabloid tell-alls, Netflix documentaries, like the next Elizabeth Smart?

All of this is equally possible and equally dismaying, but one thing Shane knows for certain is that he and Ryan will not - cannot - come out of this the same as they went into it.

By three in the afternoon, the total is hovering just around $1,299,833, and Shane is so anxious he could burst. He hasn’t eaten since the early morning but the adrenaline coursing through him right now seems enough to power him for forever. In preparation for the moment that’s been haunting his every waking and sleeping thought for days, he preps the audio recording software on his laptop and poises his shaking thumb over his phone to dial Ryan’s number.

It doesn’t even take ten more minutes for the final refresh of the page to reveal -  _ thank God _ \- a fully-green total bar.

He gets an email notification in the same moment, no doubt alerting him that his goal has been reached, but there’s no time to check it. He’s already calling Ryan’s phone.

With the recording up and running, and the dial tone ringing, a second terrifying thought occurs to Shane: that Ryan might not be the one to answer the phone.

After six rings, the call disconnects.

Shane rakes a hand through his hair and dials again. And again, after six rings, nothing. And again. And again, and again, and again.

More than twenty minutes go by as Shane calls exactly eighty-six times, each time with increasing desperation. By the eighty-seventh call, he’s an absolute wreck.

As his phone dangles uselessly in his hand, his worst fears come clawing their way up to the surface and begin to stew in his mind:  _ It’s no use, it’s over, Ryan’s phone is long dead and he’s still being held hostage somewhere. His kidnapper set this all up just to take the money and he won’t ever give Ryan back up. He killed Ryan after the Friday night call, he’s already been dead eleven days - _

The phone rings.

If only for a passing millisecond, as he looks down at Ryan’s contact blinking across his phone screen, Shane’s body is suspended in the third response option between Fight and Flight: Freeze. More specifically, frozen in complete and utter terror at what might be awaiting him on the other end of the line. But common sense kicks in soon enough, and he accepts the call and clicks the speakerphone button faster than any human should be able to operate their thumbs.

“Ryan?”

The response that blares out of the phone - Ryan’s voice, more shrill and panicked than Shane’s ever heard it - will most certainly be seared into Shane’s memory for as long as he lives:

“Shane!  _ Shane!  _ Falling Springs, off of Route 39! Big red cabin, no front windows, two stories, un-”

The line goes dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and thank you so much for reading along! This monster has been sitting in my Google Docs for over six months, and even though I haven't actually worked on it in quite a while, I figured it's better off published on here than collecting dust in my files. Although I likely won't end up writing/publishing the rest of the story, I appreciate you taking the time to read it. :)


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